Dominoes are a type of polygon in the plane made up of two equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge. They were first used as gaming objects in the 12th century, and were most likely invented by the Egyptians. They were often made from bone, wood or ivory–materials readily available at that time. Today dominoes are usually made of heavy plastic. There are many ways to create domino art, and you can do them as simple or as elaborate as you want. Dominoes can be used to make straight lines, curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, or even 3D structures like towers and pyramids. You can also use dominoes to design an entire track for a train, or even a full-scale model of a building.
Domino effect is a figurative term that refers to the cascading impact of one event on subsequent events. It is often used in business or political contexts to describe the way in which a small change can have a ripple effect that affects a large group or organization. For example, if one person in a soccer team wins against their biggest rivals, that will set them up for the state playoffs and possibly create a domino effect that helps the whole team.
A similar domino effect can occur in a story. If an author writes a scene that does not have enough dramatic or logical impact on the scenes before and after it, then that scene will be ineffective. Similarly, if a character uncovers an important piece of information, but in the next scene it is not fully utilized, that scene will have little impact.
When writing a story, an author can use domino to help them plan out the overall plot and structure. A dominant scene is the starting point for a story, and all other scenes should lead from that scene. If you are a pantser writer, without detailed outlines or using software like Scrivener to plan out your scenes ahead of time, then you may find that you have scenes that are ineffective because they do not have enough logical impact on the domino scene before and after it.
Traditionally, dominoes have been used to play games in which a player lays a tile on the table positioned so that the touching ends match–one’s touch one’s or two’s touch two’s. Each player in turn then plays a tile to add to the chain, and as long as all the exposed ends total a multiple of five or three the players score points.
A popular game with children and adults is called “The Block Game.” Each player begins with a number of dominoes (normally seven for a two-player game, but four for three-player and five for four-player) and takes turns placing them on the table. When a tile is played, each other player then picks up the matching dominoes that are lying open and adds them to their own set of dominoes.